Wolf Among Us - Review

Posted: 10/10/13

Like the Fables comics it’s based on, Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us juxtaposes universal childhood stories with the harsh realities of urban life, creating a fascinating setting where you can expect the unexpected. What the game sometimes lacks a strong feeling of interaction, it makes up for it with enveloping storytelling. Some surprisingly human moments will make you crave the next installment, which is high praise for any episodic series.

The Wolf Among Us constructs a particularly seedy New York City, where foul-mouthed versions of timeless characters, called Fables, hide among regular citizens after being exiled from their homelands. You play as the Big Bad Wolf, better known as “Big B.”, and instead of stalking girls in red hoods, he’s now a sheriff protecting the fairytale denizens, ensuring they stay out of sight and don’t cause too much trouble.

The fantasy trappings found throughout The Wolf Among Us are smartly underplayed. At their core, the characters are all just regular people and their storybook qualities only exaggerate rather than distort who they are. Snow White is one of the best examples. Dressed in plain clothes, her only distinguishing features are the subtle snowflakes on her shirt. As you might expect, Snow White is hopelessly optimistic even in dire circumstances.

However, The Wolf Among Us reminds us that good intentions don’t outweigh action, since Snow White wants to help the deprived people around her, but can’t find the will to do so. Other complex yet common problems are probed with surprising effectiveness. Issues like escaping a troubled past, losing your identity, and being forced to live in a corrupt system are explored using characters you probably haven’t thought much about since elementary school.

The game’s take on the The Big Apple overflows with ugliness. In the various rundown apartments you investigate, the walls are filled with holes and trash is littered everywhere. The buildings act like confessionals, since signs of struggle such as blood or claw marks often decorate walls and windows. So much care went into realizing the decrepit surroundings that you might want to take a long shower after finishing the episode.

Even so, you don’t have that much opportunity to truly get your hands dirty as a player. Big B’s role as the sheriff is to piece together the murder of an important character. He visits various places looking for clues, but the game asks very little of the player. Instead of making investigations exercises in deduction, you simply have to look around a small area seeing what you can click on then move on to the next story bit. It’s so pedestrian, you wonder why the game is giving you control at all.

The script also doesn’t always meet the standard set by the game’s style. Characters regularly use profanity and while that certainly fits with the tone The Wolf Among Us is going for, the delivery rarely sounds natural. It comes across as swearing for the sake of being edgy, slightly shattering believability.

Big B’s performance can be just as unconvincing. He sounds gruff and rough around the edges, but he sometimes just comes across as bored, like a lycanthropic David Duchovny at his most complacent. Big B does have his moments, and his interactions with Snow White are among the best in the episode. The charmingly awkward tension between the two gives the game a center that’s easy to latch onto.

The few big decisions you make in episode one seem to have a lot of significance, but their full impact is clearly waiting to be revealed in later episodes. At the very least, the choices leave you second guessing, since all available options appear worth pursuing.

As a first episode, The Wolf Among Us successfully introduces a world we want to know more of. Tidbits of information about places and characters are enough to satisfy while also creating sufficient mystery that your mind will stretch into all sorts of possibilities. The way you play The Wolf Among Us doesn’t earn as much enthusiasm, but that perhaps proves games can enthrall even if what your hands are doing isn’t that interesting.

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